As we continued down the long grade we came once more in sight of the Columbia with a wide vista down the valley and over the rugged hills that guard it on either hand. Hood River is a clean, substantial-looking town of about three thousand people. Besides being famous for apples, it has the added distinction of being the home address of the Hon. Billy Sunday when he is recuperating from his strenuous campaigns against the devil—and Billy’s devil is quite as crude and primitive as the demon of the Indians who cracked his tail at The Dalles. Billy has invested a small portion of the proceeds of soul-saving in an apple ranch a few miles from Hood River, one of the finest in the valley, a garage man told us. He also gave us the cheerful information that there were no such mountain grades to be encountered as those we had just come over. There were twenty miles of rough and, as it proved, rather muddy road to be covered before we should come to the splendid new boulevard famous the country over as the Columbia River Highway.
ONEONTA TUNNEL, COLUMBIA RIVER HIGHWAY
From photo by The Winter Co., Portland, Oregon
This piece of road, though rather indifferent, passes some delightful scenery, both of river and shore, and when improved will be a fit link in the scenic glories of the famous highway. In places the road creeps through tangles of fern, hazel, and maples, festooned with vines and brilliant with autumnal red and yellow. At one point we passed beneath a wonderful bank towering hundreds of feet above us and covered with a rank, almost tropical tangle of ferns, shrubs, and vines, through which many clear streamlets trickled down. The rocks and earth were moss-covered and it was altogether one of the most delightful and refreshing bits of greenery we ever came across. Again we entered groups of stately trees crowding closely to the roadside and caught many entrancing glimpses of the broad, green river through the stately trunks.
At no place does this part of the road rise to any great height, but still there were several vantage points affording fine views down the river. Especially was this true of Mitchell Point, where improvement is under way. Here a tunnel has been cut for several hundred feet through the rocky bulwark of Storm Crest Mountain, which gives its name to the work, and next the river are five great arched windows, giving an effect very like that of the Axenstrasse on Lake Lucerne. The Axenstrasse has only three such windows, nor do I think any view from them is as lovely as that from Mitchell’s Point. Here we had wonderful vistas of river, hill and forest framed in the great openings, the river emerald-green and the forests dashed with brilliant colors, for autumn reds and yellows on the Columbia are quite as bright and glorious as those of New England. So sheer are the sides of the great rock which Storm Crest Tunnel pierces that it was necessary to suspend the engineers from ropes anchored at the summit in order to blast footings to make the survey. The tunnel, yard for yard, is the most expensive piece of construction so far completed on the entire road. Near the place we noted an attractive inn with a glassed-in veranda overlooking the river, perhaps two hundred feet above it.
COLUMBIA HIGHWAY AT MITCHELL POINT
From photo by The Weister Co., Portland, Oregon
The completed portion of the highway extends fifty-five miles west of Portland and as construction was still under way, we had to wallow through a quarter of a mile of sharp crushed stone before coming to the finished surface—a performance which left deadly marks on tires. But once on the wide, smooth stretches of this unequalled boulevard, we drew a deep breath of relief and proceeded in high anticipation which in no particular outstripped the reality. For the Columbia River Highway is one of the world’s supreme feats of engineering, commanding a series of views of one of the greatest and most beautiful rivers in the world, and affording unsurpassed panoramas of forest, hill, and mountain.